3D Printing News and Innovation

Forget Hours of Tiresome Assembly, Simply 3D Print a Ship in a Bottle

Why spend hours in painstaking, meticulous labor when you can simply 3D print a ship in a bottle? using Objet Connex 3D printer’s ability to print two separate material types in one pass makes it possible to print an opaque object within a clear object…

What would YOU do if you could 3D print in a clear material such as this?

Nothing on any level of cuteness, but just being able to print opaque polyhedra encapsulated within clear ones, or ball-and-stick type thingies embedded in a semi-amorphous transparent
“cloud” would be quite useful.

I could think of a lot of applications for optically clear material – internal light guides for LED designer lamps (I think Disney research is looking into this right now), or for enclosures (usually the LED is somewhere on the PCB inside, and a lot of products use clear light guides to get it to the outside of the case).

Lastly, you don’t seem to have a robust plastic that is watertight at the moment. ABS in FDM print would do that, and I guess some of the Objet materials too (to make waterproof enclosures).
So, as long as it is commercially feasible for you, bring it on There are never enough materials (at least for some of us…) Laser sintered metal (or better, laser melted metal) at a more affordable price would also be awesome…

I’d imagine the blending would make for some difficult choices for newcomers, but specifying known blends for a good material would be nice.
I know I have a few models set aside that can only be printed properly using this type of printer; for example a Metroid that requires a clear membrane surrounding internal biological structures.